Kukla's Korner Hockey

Ryane Clowe when asked about him reaching over the boards to touch the puck while the LA Kings were rushing up the ice on a power play.

Watch the video…

added 9:17am, from Eric Duhatschek of the Globe and Mail,

For his part, Clowe – who was massively effective for the Sharks, in picking up the Gordie Howe hat trick, with a goal, an assist and a fight - disavowed any knowledge of what the heck reporters were talking about. That’s exactly what he said too: “I have no idea what you guys are talking about. I’ll have to see the video or something. Someone show me the video.”

Maybe NHL discipline czar Brendan Shanahan can oblige Clowe later today. The ball is clearly in his court.

Comments

how is this not a suspendable offense? If the league is about protecting the integrity of the game, THESE are the types of things that need to be stopped. I even more disappointed in Clowe: we know he wants to win and he is an intense, high-spirited, and talented player which is exactly what this league needs. But his selfish behavior clearly jeopardizes the integrity of the game. Clowe is not above the league and this type of behavior - above all else - should not be tolerated. Suspend him one game.

Posted by
scooter
from Sasakatoon on 04/06/12 at 10:37 AM ET

What were the four on-ice officials so enamored with that they were supposedly not watching the puck?

That’s reaching 30 seconds of 6 on 5 levels of incompetence, sharkesgetintheplayoffsorelsemandates, or just plain stupidity.

Simply pathetic.

Posted by
WingsFanInBeanLand
from where free agents no longer dare. on 04/06/12 at 10:42 AM ET

This was on the MSN homepage this morning. First story I ahve seen there all season. They didn’t even cover the Crosby return, but this is what they show. Talk about showing the worst side of the sport to the rest of the world.

Dear NHL,

Get it right this time and show that this sort of flagrant cheating is completely unacceptable.

The League should forfeit the Sharks’ victory; take the points away completely, give them to the Kings, or give each team a point.

Posted by
RedMenace
from the Church of Jesus Lashoff on 04/06/12 at 11:37 AM ET

I stayed up late to watch the end of this game and was enraged when this happened (and I don’t have a horse in that race, either! I can’t even imagine what it’d be like if I did!). I wondered if it’d get swept under the rug since it was a west coast game. I hope it won’t be. I’m not sure if the CBA allows for supplementary discipline in this instance, but it damn well ought to.

A San Jose Shark being unsportsmanlike? I can scarcely endure the shock.

Posted by
bezukov
from the kids are alright. on 04/06/12 at 11:58 AM ET

Clowe was just re-claiming the phantom 1.4 seconds LA somehow managed to win a game with earlier in the season.
Amazing how nothing became of that, but somehow the “integrity of the game” has remained intact.

Posted by
Spencer
on 04/06/12 at 12:04 PM ET

Holy sh*t. This is way too much. Whatever the league does, anyone wanna bet it is too little?

Posted by
tuxedoTshirt
from the Home of the 1937 World Champions on 04/06/12 at 12:04 PM ET

somehow the “integrity of the game” has remained intact.

No, it has remained harshly abused.

Posted by
tuxedoTshirt
from the Home of the 1937 World Champions on 04/06/12 at 12:05 PM ET

Clowe was just re-claiming the phantom 1.4 seconds LA somehow managed to win a game with earlier in the season.
Amazing how nothing became of that, but somehow the “integrity of the game” has remained intact.

Posted by Spencer on 04/06/12 at 11:04 AM ET

So a player on the bench directly interfering with an ongoing play, and an off-ice, NHL official screwing up the clock are the same thing?

Yeah, no.

Posted by
RedMenace
from the Church of Jesus Lashoff on 04/06/12 at 12:11 PM ET

If the herd of blind zebras grazing around the rink at the time had actually called a penalty, the Kings would have had a 2 man advantage. Draw your own conclusions.

Absolutely, this messed with the integrity of the game and Clowe should get suspended.

So a player on the bench directly interfering with an ongoing play, and an off-ice, NHL official screwing up the clock are the same thing?
Yeah, no.
Posted by RedMenace from the darkest recesses on 04/06/12 at 11:11 AM ET

This is a surprising move seeing as Ryan Clowe is a classy player. The same classy guy that expects someone, who isn’t a fighter by the way, to drop the gloves because they put a nice, clean hit on you. Guys like him are what’s wrong with this league right now.
My guess is they’ll make it a point to punish him pretty hard. This is getting a lot of press and even though NBC has WWE wannabe’s (and don’t forget HNIC’s Don Cherry) they probably don’t wanna be grouped in the same category as that crap.

Posted by
Vladimir16
from Grand River Valley on 04/06/12 at 12:18 PM ET

watching the replay, i am not even sure why Clowe would feel he had to do it. He had two D-men back. As far a suspension, i would say no if the officials had caught it and penalized him but since they missed it, i would say give him a game.

That makes it even worse.
The league has shown time and time again on various fronts that the “integrity of the game” is not as important as they would want you to believe.
How much you want to bet that Clowe gets fined the league maximum at most.

Posted by
Spencer
on 04/06/12 at 12:27 PM ET

If the herd of blind zebras grazing around the rink at the time had actually called a penalty, the Kings would have had a 2 man advantage. Draw your own conclusions.

Clowe was just re-claiming the phantom 1.4 seconds LA somehow managed to win a game with earlier in the season.
Amazing how nothing became of that, but somehow the “integrity of the game” has remained intact.

Posted by Spencer on 04/06/12 at 11:04 AM ET

This has nothing to do with an off-ice NHL employee tampering with the game and indirectly affecting the game’s outcome (though it is a pretty severe example of this). Rather, this is an NHL player directly influencing the outcome of a crucial game through intentional and illegal actions.

I’m absolutely shocked that the on-ice officials missed this. When determining supplemental discipline, Shanny considers: the on-ice call/non-call, the severity and intent of the action, the circumstances under which the infraction occurred, and the resulting effects/injury of the action.

In this case:
On-ice call was missed
The action was intentional and egregious. The intent being to break up the rush (which it did)
This occurred in the waning minutes of a crucial game
The resulting effect was that the Kings were robbed of a scoring chance late in the game, and the lack of a penalty robbed the Kings of a 5-on-3

The league should revoke the 2 points from the Sharks and file the game as a regulation loss. The Kings did not earn the win, so you can’t really reward them with the win or extra point. Clowe should be suspended for the remaining regular season game and a pair in the first round.

Maybe the sort of thing that’s somewhat humorous when you read it in a book of hockey tales twenty years after the fact, but at this time, it’s one of the darkest stains on officiating, in a year full of them, in addition to being a classless move by Clowe. If four officials can’t get it right on this, let’s start the firing and go back to three so at least the players have a little more room to skate along the boards.

Posted by
toolazytologin
on 04/06/12 at 01:17 PM ET

During the game they showed video of Clowe on the bench and it’s clear he says, “that was stupid” and looks embarrassed. I was shocked when it happened, I’ve never seen anything like it. I was watching the Kings feed and their announcers missed the boat - they laughed about it, I think they were shocked too, but they should have been outraged because it did cost them a 5-3 opportunity. But they did do a nice job of showing what the officials were looking at, and it was a lot of everything that wasn’t the puck. Very poor job by the refs and Clowe should get at least 1 game, I think 2.

If they don’t revoke the points and suspend him for the entire playoffs, then they are condoning it.

this is an NHL player directly influencing the outcome of a crucial game through intentional and illegal actions.

Yup. If they give him ANY wiggle room here it’s a travesty. He’s already missed his chance to say it was an accident.

How much you want to bet that Clowe gets fined the league maximum at most.

That’s where the smart money is.

when Clowe’s skating along the boards next to the Kings bench on Saturday someone should reach their stick out and clothesline him.

This move is called a Semenko.

Posted by
tuxedoTshirt
from the Home of the 1937 World Champions on 04/06/12 at 01:31 PM ET

This entire herd of blind zebras should be excluded from working the playoffs.

A correct call would have been too many men on the ice. TMM is one of the few penalties that Linesmen are permitted to call. So there were four pairs of eyes on the ice that were (allegedly) connected to functioning lumps of gray matter of sufficient size to enable at least one of them to see and call this egregious infraction.

A crew that misses something so blatant and obvious does not deserve the prestige or financial reward of working the playoffs. Of course, if the NHL employed such accountability measures, they might only have one or two crews of officials available to work all of the playoff games.

Turns out he will completely get away with it: According to an NHL source, Clowe will not be fined nor suspended for playing the puck from the bench.

Why? Because the current NHL rules don’t provide an avenue to punish Clowe through the Dept. of Player Safety. From Rule 56.2 — Interference:

A minor penalty shall be imposed on any identifiable player on the players’ bench or penalty bench who, by means of his stick or his body, interferes with the movements of the puck or any opponent on the ice during the progress of the play. In addition, should a player about to come onto the ice, play the puck while one or both skates are still on the players’ or penalty bench, a minor penalty for interference shall be assessed.

The appropriate penalty according to the playing rules shall be assessed when a player on the players’ or penalty bench gets involved with an opponent on the ice during a stoppage in play. The player(s) involved may be subject to additional sanctions as appropriate pursuant to Rule 28 — Supplementary Discipline.

Supplemental discipline here only applies to players on the bench that get involved in a stoppage. For what Clowe did, the only recourse under the current rules would have been a minor penalty. There’s no provision for a fine or suspension, or even a game misconduct.

Seems like there must be some catch-all provision for conduct unbecoming or something like that.

Didn’t the league suspend Sean Avery back in 2008 for like 6 games for his “sloppy seconds” comments? I think the reason given was “conduct detrimental to the league and game of hockey” or something like that. While these are obviously differing types of situations, they each represent conduct detrimental to the game. IMO, Clowe’s actions are detrimental to the integrity of the game, so I think there should be some leeway for the league to suspend Clowe outside of the Department of Player Safety jurisdiction.

Here’s the rule for this type of action, “Rule 56.2, which reads, in part: “A minor penalty shall be imposed on any identifiable player on the players’ bench or penalty bench who, by means of his stick or his body, interferes with the movements of the puck or any opponent on the ice during the progress of the play.” A bench minor is given if the players is unidentifiable.”

I’m not sure what is worse, Clowe doing it or denying it. Either way, it’s sad and pathetic that this is how the jose sharks have to win games.

Posted by
mrfluffy
from A wide spot on I-90 in Montana on 04/06/12 at 02:13 PM ET

If an automatic suspension for being an instigator can be waived off with a magic wand, I see no reason the same magic wand can’t be used here.
Just another example of how $%^&* up the boobs are who run this league letting something like this just slide by the way side.

Posted by
MOWingsfan19
from I really like our team on 04/06/12 at 02:14 PM ET

Just another example of how $%^&* up the boobs are

Her tits were like “coming home from school and finding out your old man ran over your cat” sad. Mournful tits. They’re like two suicide notes stuffed into a glitter bra.

That’ll do. Or, “what he did was so fvcked up that we are issuing a discretionary punishment.”
Wow. I really thought I was exaggerating when I said he’d only get a fine.

Posted by
tuxedoTshirt
from the Home of the 1937 World Champions on 04/06/12 at 02:38 PM ET

While I think Clowe should have at least been fined, without any specific clause on the rules to cover this, the Players’ Union would be screaming bloody murder if the league tried to punish him on this.
The conduct clause only covers conduct off the ice and all on ice conduct is supposed to be governed specifically by the rules.
I expect to see this change next season especially after this incident. However, a lot of that depends on the how the CBA discussion hash out.

Posted by
Spencer
on 04/06/12 at 03:09 PM ET

Wow. I really thought I was exaggerating when I said he’d only get a fine.

Honestly, don’t expect the league to do much of anything that the players won’t like. With CBA discussions looming, the league’s going to do what it can to appease the PA. I wouldn’t be surprised if that has something to do with the Shanabans decreasing, also.